Artist collective Postcommodity’s work will go on display to expand the Phoenix Art Museum’s collection.

The Men’s Arts Council, a Valley nonprofit dedicated to supporting Phoenix Art Museum’s community-outreach programs, selected four components of Postcommodity’s artwork “Repellent Fence/Valla Repelente” (2015) to receive funding earmarked for a new Museum acquisition. The large-scale installation is the 40th work acquired into the Phoenix Art Collection with money provided by Men’s Arts Council, a press release notes.

“‘Repellent Fence’ offers an incredible opportunity for audiences to learn about Indigenous histories embedded in the work itself, while also sparking larger conversations about human-made geographic borders and how they affect communities and identity,” Art Harding, Men’s Art Council board president, stated. “We’re honored to bring something with such deep meaning to the Museum’s collection.”

"Repellent Fence" was a two-mile-long ephemeral land-art installation along the U.S./Mexico border composed of 26 bright yellow balloons that were tethered together. Each 10 feet in diameter and floating 50 feet above the ground, the balloons are modeled after the ineffectual scared eye balloons commercially sold to repel birds with bright colors and predator eyes.

According to Postcommodity, they appropriated this image because red, yellow, and black are primary medicine colors among many Indigenous tribes in North and South America. Designed this way to communicate with birds — the mediators between the physical and spiritual worlds for Indigenous peoples — the work embodies the intersections of conflicting cultural, economic, and political issues.

The work premiered in 2015 bisecting the U.S./Mexico border at Douglas and Agua Prieta, Sonora, and was presented in collaboration with Arizona State University Art Museum and supported by grants from Creative Capital, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation, and Art Matters.

Postcommodity artists Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martinez, and Kade Twist collaborated with the area’s civic governments, along with local schools, business owners, artists, community organizers, and community members to realize the installation and bring attention to the longstanding immigration crisis at the U.S./Mexico border, reunite two communities, and continue exploration of contested spaces.

For four days, the line of monumental balloons became a beacon that, according to the artists, celebrated the “historical stewards of the land, and those who are following ancient Indigenous trade routes in search of economic opportunity.”

This summer, Men’s Arts Council voted to help the Phoenix Art Museum acquire four components of the larger “Repellent Fence” project: two balloons, one video of an installed balloon, and one photograph.

Visit phxart.org.